Life Went On
by CacophonicDW
Summary: Bron faces the reality of his mate's death. One-shot. Rated T for a little bit of graphic violence.


It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. His nest, his mate and her parents, the children that must have been born, all gone. Bron hadn't eaten in days, as he frantically tried to navigate the newly formed wasteland. His voice was hoarse from calling out for them, and asking every passerby he saw if they had seen them. A few confused sightings, nothing definite, but he just _knew_ he was going the right way. He _had_ to be.

It was a dusty orange sunset, the heat of a long day still baking thoroughly into the clay of the earth, when he spotted a small herd of clubtails, moving away from the bright circle across the wastes.

"Hey! Hello there!"

The herd started, each member eyeing him with wary apprehension.

"Please! I'm looking for my mate and children. They would have been traveling with two old ones..."

The clubtails shuffled away from him, throwing him suspicious backward glances as they went. An older female lagged behind the others, turned to face him. She glanced back at her retreating companions and, slowly, began to speak.

"The two old ones, they headed toward the bright circle. They believed that they could find the Great Valley. Your mate..." The clubtail lowered her eyes, and let a few moments pass.

"I'm sorry. She died fighting the Sharptooth the night of the great earthshake. There was a little one with her, a son, but... I do not know what happened to him."

He watched, numb, as she gave him a sad nod and continued on her way. His mind was a defensive jumble, refusing to aknowledge all but the most superficial information he had been given.  
The Great Valley? Wasn't that just a hatchling's story?  
And...  
 _He had a son._

-

His mate stood atop a curved outcropping, serene and far more beautiful than he had even remembered. The rich, warm brown of her skin glowed in the gentle sunlight. He was walking toward her, a burst of joy expanding in his chest.

He ran, and ran, yet came no closer. His legs began to tire. She caught his eye from afar, a long, sad look, and turned away.

"Wait!"

He forced himself toward her with all his might, but every step that he took came slower than the last. He caught sight of a deep shadow behind her, small at first, but soon grown large enough to blot out the failing sunlight.

"Wait! Please-"

The shadow reared its head, split apart a gaping maw full of endless rows of flawless pointed teeth, endless rows of death. She saw it, whipped her tail, but the maw descended, snapping shut, teeth finding purchase. Her neck was his neck, and he could feel the crushing, tearing, unbearable pain-

-

Bron woke screaming, his limbs scrabbling for purchase of their own accord, dust and bits of debris flying in a mad arc around his prone form. He planted his feet on the ground to steady himself, breath coming in ragged gasps, trying to make sense of the suffocating blackness around him. The reality of the situation came upon him gradually, his mind and memories returning piece by piece. It had been a dream, though all too real, and the bright circle was still gone from the sky. She was dead. He lowered his head roughly, feeling the cold dirt scratch at the underside of his neck, and sobbed helplessly for his mate, his son, and himself.

It was the first truly terrifying sleep-story he'd had since he was a hatchling. It was the first of many.

-

Bron had spent the next few weeks wandering aimlessly, without hope or direction. The lands he crossed steadily became greener, but he ate little and slept less, the strain of long days and short nights beginning to tell in his bearing. His stooped form and swollen eyes hardly set him apart, though, as the signs of grief were all too common in these strange, altered lands. The few travelers he crossed along the way minded their own business as surely as he minded his.

He was still searching for his son, but his heart had left him. He trudged through each day mechanically, because he knew it was something he had to do. When he passed a tall rock outcropping and saw a group of young ones- young _longnecks_ \- wandering aimlessly by themselves, he half thought he had finally lost his mind. His heart skipped a beat as he approached them, but it quickly fell again. They looked like they were just barely out of the egg, far too young to be his. One was bigger, but it was a ridge-head, and a green one at that.

The closer he got, the heavier his heart became. As he leaned his head in to inspect them, the bigger one kept himself in front of the little ones, shielding them with his fragile body. It hardly mattered, as he quickly confirmed what he already knew; his son was not among them. He focused his gaze on the older child, intending to offer an explanation, but the young face so full of life and determination filled him with bitterness and hollow, longing thoughts of what his own child would have looked like. His stomach rolled, and he turned away. They would die soon on their own, he knew. Somehow, he found that he couldn't care.

"Hey! Hey, where're you going?" The larger child yelled, his voiced tinged with fear and desperation.

Bron didn't answer.

The children had followed him for a time- he would look back occasionally to see them scurry under cover, or sneak glances at him from the underbrush. He did not slow his pace, though, and eventually they drifted farther and farther behind. He soon stopped seeing them entirely, and he could breathe a bit easier. The last thing he needed was a living reminder of his failures. Feeling securely alone, he had stopped to strip a few trees of their leaves when a mind-numbing roar split the sky, followed by the unmistakable sound of children shrieking.

Looking back years later, he would try to convince himself that he had turned back for the sake of the children. In truth, the sharptooth's call filled his mind with a raw bloodlust, and an undercurrent of something much deeper; the longing of a very real part of himself that wanted only to die, so that he could find his mate at last.

He thought of none of this as he crashed through the sparse vegetation, quickly catching sight of the hefty two-footer. It was distracted by the scurrying longneck children who promised to be an easy, if unsatisfying meal, and barely had time to get a straight look at the newcomer before the fully grown longneck barrelled into it, full-tilt. If the sharptooth had been prepared for him and not so woefully undernourished, he might have paid more dearly for his rashness. But, as it was, for every frenzied bite and scratch he took he delivered a crushing blow with deadly accuracy. He fought tirelessly with a strength born of madness, charging forward every time the beast sought to put distance between them, favoring offense to a fault. Finding itself backed up against a sheer rock wall, the sharptooth lunged one final time, its teeth finding purchase in the meat of Bron's shoulder. Without thinking, howling in rage and pain Bron smashed his body forward, crushing his foe against the wall. It thrashed and gurgled, jaws crushed against the wound it had made, then fell limp. Bron stepped away, legs shaking, and the creature tumbled to the ground in a sad heap.

As his breathing slowed, he could feel a dark rage boiling up again. The sharptooth's battered form before him wasn't enough. He brought a massive foot down onto the monster's rib cage and pressed down, slowly. The deliberate crunch of bones tore through his brain, and something inside him broke. One after another his forelegs lifted and slammed down on the lifeless form, cracking, crushing, tearing, as tears fell from his eyes in an endless stream.

 _"Why?"_ He whispered through clenched teeth, still thrashing the now unrecognizable form. Finally beginning to tire, he reared up on his hind legs to a titanic height, seeming to hang in the air for a moment that lasted a personal eternity.

 **"WHY HER?!"** He bellowed, crashing down with all of his weight in one ultimate, empty act of destruction. He stood there for some time, a mocking picture of dark tranquility, blood and bits of bone embedded in his skin. Looking down at what he'd done, he felt... distant. As if he were dreaming again. He turned away, and was surprised to see the children there, watching. Stunned fear and awe shone on their open faces, but the green one had a peculiar look in his eyes. Admiration? Bron shuddered.

"Come on." He gestured with his head, and started walking toward the lowlands. He didn't have any idea where he would go next, but it seemed that it wasn't his day to die.

-

Somehow, life went on. They had stayed in the lowlands for a time, resting and eating what they could. The children had taken to telling every passer-by who would listen the story of their rescue, and Bron's savage fight with the sharptooth. Struck with awe, many of them had begun to follow him, too. They didn't believe half of what they heard, but the half they did believe was enough. They knew the value of a leader who could defend them. These were hard times, and there was safety in numbers.

As the size of his new makeshift herd grew, Bron buried the memory of his mate and lost child deep down, where they couldn't touch him. The dreams still came, but he felt like he was outside of them, watching a disjointed scene from a stranger's life. He could never forget, but he could still go on living.

There was a sad kind of irony to it. When he was young, he had always dreamed of becoming the leader of a herd. But not like this…  
Not like this.


End file.
